Indy V Settings: What locations are left?

Pick up to 3 locales you'd like to see in Indy V, not necessarily as a group


  • Total voters
    30

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Maplo.jpg

Matt Busch map seen above discussed here.

Apparently, we didn't have a single generalist thread on this up until now.

Closest we came was an excellent thread, "Hey, Lucas & Spielberg here are some locations!", started by Indy's brother, but that was more about posting images of stunning locations suitable for the screen. Some similar material shows up in Indy 5 visual wish list, particularly later on.

As usual, a review of other existing materials:

Monkey King: Strip it for parts? - a pet thread of mine, advocating a little for a haunted house, maybe in east Asia, and advocating <I>a lot</I> for Africa.

Idea for a snow bound Indy 5 - an early essential thread digging into snowy and icy types of environment, with, as I recall, discussion of Russian, Alpine, Scandinavian, and Chinese possibilities.

Indy V is in China??? - a relatively deep dive on China as a possibility, with some consideration of the political reality both then and now, which also begets some posts on Australia and Oceania.

Your Wish Locations for Indy 5 - a thread that didn't quite get traction but which does mention a few places.

Hitchcockian Indy V - apart from discussion of some geographic options, this is mainly relevant as its a discussion of vehicle-as-place, most specifically a train.

I think the only "Frontier" left for INdy V HAS to be an [Asian one] - as you'd guess, makes the case for a return to Asia as a natural next step, but also brings in some other possibilities.

Some casting/character threads touch on this issue too, but maybe we'll look at those further down the line.

The Globetrotting Indiana Jones? - finally, some obligatory pushback on how integral to the concept going to multiple countries is.

***

Any poll has its own biases, but I've tried to weight this one towards broad swaths of the globe that haven't yet been included in any of the four films. Maybe vote for 3 each? Let me know if there's anything glaringly missing here.

It's more complicated than this, but I think there might be 2 primary considerations involved here, apart from any production considerations:

-What's an environment we haven't seen before?
-What's a culture we haven't seen before?

What do you want to see?
 
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Raiders90

Well-known member
I would love to see an adventure set either in, or including:

The Caribbean - Jamaica specifically
Central Africa/"The Dark Continent
French Indochina
New York, circa 1960-1964
A snowbound location along the lines of Nepal

Start the pre-title adventure off in Jamaica - and then go from there. We go back to the States and end up in 1964 NYC around the World's Fair. Perhaps Jones is meeting some mysterious agent there who has contacts him with clues about the MacGuffin, and in the rush of the crowd, this contact is killed and Jones gives chase of his murderer. Jones then follows the clues to this latest MacGuffin or follows his enemies to different locations. A nice sequence in each.

This would be an adventure not instigated by some outside body, but by Indy's own desire for some object which has eluded him his whole life. His version of the Holy Grail - the obsession that his father's entire career. We've spoken before about the nature of obsession in Indiana Jones - how each villain, and also Henry Sr., suffer from it. We've never seen what Indy's obsession is. The ultimate piece of fortune and glory.

Forget South America. Too generic. If we have to do the Middle East, let's do a part that we've never explored before - the Promised Land.
 

DoomsdayFAN

Member
Dr.Sartorius said:
The crystal skull of Cozan from the novels.

Too bad they didn't do the human skull in the film. The one we got was horrible.


I'm surprised they went with a Crystal Skull if it had already been done in a book.
 

AndyLGR

Active member
I just hope they make it seem more of a sweeping story location wise, like the original was. KOTCS didn't have that scope for me.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
AndyLGR said:
I just hope they make it seem more of a sweeping story location wise, like the original was. KOTCS didn't have that scope for me.

Though with that said, almost exactly half of Raiders's run time is spent in Egypt. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is more extreme in that regard, devoting all but ~37 minutes of its runtime to South America (slightly over two-thirds), but half to what we might consider the Brazil sections, everything after Indy and Mutt are captured at Nazca. About 86% of Temple of Doom takes place in India, about 66% of that at Pankot or its immediate environs. Last Crusade is the most spread out, with 46% of its runtime spent in 4+ European nations (Italy, Austria, Germany, and whatever section of the Mediterranean coast that chase occurs on). Almost exactly one-third of Last Crusade takes place in Hatay. (All of these are estimated based on DVD chapter times given at ChaptersDb.org.)

It seems to me, then, that all of the films do a pretty deep dive on one particular location, with others scattered around to varying extents. So what places can an Indy film afford to spend roughly half or more of its runtime at without covering old ground, literally or figuratively?

(Obligatory link to the Globetrotting Indiana Jones thread.)
 

Violet

Moderator Emeritus
The other thing to take in consideration is where they can film safely coz chances are with the issues in the Middle East and even some parts of Africa and even Europe to a small extent could be difficult to film in (partly why I based my choices on Asia and Russia, snow places and island locales).
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Attila the Professor said:
Though with that said, almost exactly half of Raiders's run time is spent in Egypt. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is more extreme in that regard, devoting all but ~37 minutes of its runtime to South America (slightly over two-thirds), but half to what we might consider the Brazil sections, everything after Indy and Mutt are captured at Nazca. About 86% of Temple of Doom takes place in India, about 66% of that at Pankot or its immediate environs. Last Crusade is the most spread out, with 46% of its runtime spent in 4+ European nations (Italy, Austria, Germany, and whatever section of the Mediterranean coast that chase occurs on). Almost exactly one-third of Last Crusade takes place in Hatay. (All of these are estimated based on DVD chapter times given at ChaptersDb.org.)
If we measure things solely by geographic range, as in how many miles Indy covers over a movie, it's funny that people say they think KotCS had a narrow one, when in reality ToD was far more guilty of it. Indy's only major hop is from Shanghai to India, which is shorter than it takes to go from US East Coast to Peru.

I can see where that misconception probably comes from, though. To a western viewer, Far East may feel notably more exotic than the Americas.
 

AndyLGR

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
Though with that said, almost exactly half of Raiders's run time is spent in Egypt. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is more extreme in that regard, devoting all but ~37 minutes of its runtime to South America (slightly over two-thirds), but half to what we might consider the Brazil sections, everything after Indy and Mutt are captured at Nazca. About 86% of Temple of Doom takes place in India, about 66% of that at Pankot or its immediate environs. Last Crusade is the most spread out, with 46% of its runtime spent in 4+ European nations (Italy, Austria, Germany, and whatever section of the Mediterranean coast that chase occurs on). Almost exactly one-third of Last Crusade takes place in Hatay. (All of these are estimated based on DVD chapter times given at ChaptersDb.org.)

It seems to me, then, that all of the films do a pretty deep dive on one particular location, with others scattered around to varying extents. So what places can an Indy film afford to spend roughly half or more of its runtime at without covering old ground, literally or figuratively?
I just picked KOTCS out of the hat as that was the last one, but as mentioned TOD also falls under the same category of not seeming too expansive.

What I like about the original is not only are you changing country, but you're changing location type too. It just seems to give the film more scope.

There aren't really many more places for Indy to go that he hasn't covered already I guess. But bearing in mind what Disney did with TFA in terms of making sure it hevaily references the original trilogy in its look, makes me convinced that Indy 5 will follow a similar path as Raiders or TLC.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
AndyLGR said:
There aren't really many more places for Indy to go that he hasn't covered already I guess. But bearing in mind what Disney did with TFA in terms of making sure it hevaily references the original trilogy in its look, makes me convinced that Indy 5 will follow a similar path as Raiders or TLC.

He's been to, what, 13 countries in the films, at best? That leaves many, <I>many</I> more places that he hasn't covered.

I grant your point about ensuring some continuity, but Spielberg and Ford and Williams will all be there for that; that is, those who were in charge and setting the tone are still largely in charge, Lucas excepted.

I guess my question becomes this: do you think think Indy 5 will follow a similar path in that it will go to similar places (desert sequence, university sequence, etc.), or that it will go to a similar number of places (bouncing from one to another)?
 
Can't help but thinking that at least as important as the locations in which the story is set are the locations in which the story is filmed. On the face of it KOTCS was as well travelled as Raiders and Crusade, but the actual filming told of a lazy approach, with filming taking place almost entirely in the US, compounded by at times embarrassingly hokey sets and painfully unnatural lighting.

Not only does the story ideally need to travel widely, but this needs to really be believed by the viewer when immersed in the film itself to my mind.
 

Z dweller

Well-known member
I believe the choice of at least some of the locations will hinge on whether or not they stick to decade-pertinent themes and film style(s), a la Lucas.

If they do, and chose the 60s as the time setting, it's almost inevitable that at least part of the action will be in the U.S. and/or U.K. (hippies, Beatles etc.).
If they add a spy angle to the story, then add USSR, China or Berlin to the list of likely locations.

If they eschew those time-related references (my favorite scenario), then they have a lot more options and can go for remote, exotic locations, along the lines of what's been suggested upthread.
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
Z dweller said:
I believe the choice of at least some of the locations will hinge on whether or not they stick to decade-pertinent themes and film style(s), a la Lucas.

If they do, and chose the 60s as the time setting, it's almost inevitable that at least part of the action will be in the U.S. and/or U.K. (hippies, Beatles etc.).
If they add a spy angle to the story, then add USSR, China or Berlin to the list of likely locations.

If they eschew those time-related references (my favorite scenario), then they have a lot more options and can go for remote, exotic locations, along the lines of what's been suggested upthread.

Hippies didn't really come into play until the late 60s. You easily set it up to any time prior to 1965 without any Hippies and without Indy looking out of place. For example these pix of regular folks from 1964 I found on google:

http://eatonvilletorainier.com/wp-c...9_10153096925348311_2503062889843370551_o.jpg

Jodi%20with%20family%201964.jpg

1964family.jpg
 
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Z dweller

Well-known member
B6
Raiders112390 said:
Hippies didn't really come into play until the late 60s.
This is only partly true.
Hippies in rural America in the early 60s? Probably not.
In large cities like NY (a location you suggested yourself)? Absolutely.

Besides, if they take the Lucas approach they would want to show them, and nobody in today's popcorn crowd would be outraged by the sight of hippies in, say, 1963.
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
Z dweller said:
B6
This is only partly true.
Hippies in rural America in the early 60s? Probably not.
In large cities like NY (a location you suggested yourself)? Absolutely.

Besides, if they take the Lucas approach they would want to show them, and nobody in today's popcorn crowd would be outraged by the sight of hippies in, say, 1963.

Wrong. Look at these shots of the 1964 NY World's Fair. Not a long haired Hippie in sight. People dressed very old fashioned...Not all that differently from 1957, actually:
NYFLUfair1964oct_620x300.jpg

wf2.jpg

wf3.jpg

wf5.jpg

6.jpg

01_Coca-Cola_Pavilion.jpg
 
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Raiders90

Well-known member
Even in the 1930s, "Indy's Era", "spacey" thoughts were already on people's minds. Exhibit A, a diagram of a future "robot pet" from the 1939 World's Fair:
image.jpg


Another robot on display from the 1939 Fair:
new-york-worlds-fair-interior-hall-of-electrical-living-people-at-video-id169283908


Even the information booth at the 1939 fair was futuristic:
Rare-1939-New-York-Worlds-Fair-Information-Booth.jpg
 
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